Top South African wines assessed

Below are my notes on 66 wines shown in London recently, supposedly because they were all given either 5 or 4.5 stars in the 2008 Platter Guide (although in the event the UK importers didn’t always manage to supply the right vintage – see the notes with each wine).

I was pretty impressed overall, as I report in my overview, which will be published in free for all on Saturday, and some of the prices (especially Simonsig’s) are wonderfully interesting. Some of these reds are unusually mature for bottles available on the market, while a white such as Hamilton...